


Eels in the Sea

by perphesone



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Lesbian Character, Lesbian Nyota Uhura, Original Alien Species - Freeform, Past Relationship(s), Post-Canon, Romance, Sci-Fi Marine Biology, Scientist T'Pring, Telepathy, Vulcan Mind Melds
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:08:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23533579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perphesone/pseuds/perphesone
Summary: Three years have passed since thekoon-ut kal-i-feeand T'Pring's bonding to Stonn in place of Spock, her betrothed. The two of them have maintained a distant relationship of necessity - an arrangement that suits them both as they pursue their own interests as individuals. Unsatisfied with her situation on Vulcan, T'Pring has made her way to Earth and joined the Pacific Environmental Survey, a team of marine biologists based in New Zealand.Meanwhile, theEnterpriseand its crew have returned to Earth after a complete five-year mission in deep space. When T'Pring meets Nyota Uhura, she is suddenly forced to confront her past, her betrothal, her bonding, and her own identity - all the things that she has been avoiding for years. At the same time, she must work with her marine biologist colleagues to investigate why sea creatures of all kinds are starting to disappear under strange circumstances. With help from Nyota and from Fizza, a Betazed bartender at the longest-standing lesbian bar in Tauranga, they have to solve a mystery that may have more at stake than the Earth itself.
Relationships: Past T'Pring/Stonn - Relationship, T'Pring/Nyota Uhura
Comments: 13
Kudos: 17





	Eels in the Sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Now you’ve got _snakes in the ocean,  
>  eels in the sea._  
> I let a man  
> make a fool out of me,  
> and it looks like I’m never gonna cease my wanderin’.”
> 
> – _Wanderin’_ , as sung by Gale Garnett, 1964

**_Pacific Ocean, near **Te** **Ika-a-Māui** , the North Island of New Zealand, Earth._ **

The salt spray splashed her and rolled off her skin in a hundred slimy rivulets. The cold drops of ocean water that stuck to her like jelly after she withdrew her hand from the waves were unpleasant, but the sensation was worth the prize she had claimed from the churning pelagic blue.

She held the serpent by its head, applying only enough pressure with her thumb above and forefinger below to prevent it from opening its jaw. The rest of its writhing body she allowed to twist in the air unsupported as she pulled it up onto the lightweight raft she occupied with Dr. Te Kiri.

The serpent displayed countershading, a camouflage pattern typical of an Earth species adapted for life in the open ocean, with a whitish belly and a smoke-blue back disrupted at regular intervals by thick, black bands along the entire length of the body. Observing the animal’s face, she noticed its round pupils and its yellow mouth. She allowed herself to make a subjective assessment of its appearance: she found it repulsive, but only mildly.

She heard Te Kiri, her supervisor, draw in a sharp breath from behind her. That sound meant that Te Kiri must have come to the end of her customary period of sentimentally gazing out at the horizon and had thus found the time to return her attention to their work.

“Miss T’Pring, I know you’re aware that’s a banded sea krait,” warned Te Kiri. She sounded very different since T’Pring had acquired the requisite proficiency in standard English to forgo her universal translator. The U.T. seldom accounted for regionalisms; never accounted for them adequately. How, after all, could one render the _Kiwi accent_ (as Te Kiri called it) in standard Vulcan?

“ _L. colubrina_ ,” confirmed T’Pring. “An Earth-native species.”

“Yes it is, Miss T’Pring. It’s a _highly venomous_ Earth-native species and you are holding it in your bare hands,” cried Te Kiri.

Although Te Kiri’s statement was a mere observation of fact that would not normally warrant a response, T’Pring understood from the rising pitch and increased volume of her voice that Te Kiri required both acknowledgment and reassurance from T’Pring.

“I am familiar with the recommended handling practices for serpentine life forms,” she calmly reminded Te Kiri. She deftly pricked the banded sea krait with a small syringe, implanting a miniscule remote tracking device under a scale just behind its head. Te Kiri anxiously hummed and edged backwards when the krait responded by thrashing the flat end of its tail in her direction.

“You and I,” Te Kiri said, “are going to have a talk about an arcane piece of equipment called protective gloves before the next time I bring you on a pick-up trip.”

“I require a tricorder, Doctor,” said T’Pring stiffly.

“Yeah, I bet you do,” muttered Te Kiri, tossing a specialized tricorder into T’Pring’s waiting hand. “A little thing called a _net’s_ what you require.”

T’Pring observed that she was experiencing irritation. She worked very hard to control the pressure of her fingers around the krait as she gathered and recorded the necessary data. The animal squirmed.

“Does Wahanui let you get away with this kind of reckless negligence?” Te Kiri asked. T’Pring believed it to be a rhetorical question, so this time she would not answer. Although T’Pring remained focused visually on her work, she suspected that Te Kiri was now standing with her hands on her hips and shouting out to the ocean, perhaps with an accompanying gesture of dismay. “You know, for a Vulcan I’d have thought you’d be a bit more meticulous,” Te Kiri went on, apparently determined to drown out all natural environmental sounds. “That’s what I’d have thought.”

T’Pring assessed her internal response to Te Kiri’s tirade and sensed that she required an aggressive physical release in order to maintain control. Her fist clenched minutely around the sea krait. She felt the delicate connection between skull and spine just under its skin.

But it was not her way to inflict needless harm – and in any case, the tracking device would have been wasted on a dead animal.

Therefore, she released the sea krait directly into the water off the edge of the raft, watched it slip into the waves, and chose to vent her fury by dropping the tricorder with _somewhat_ unnecessary force, such that it hit the bottom of the raft and bounced.

“Oh, good,” said Te Kiri flatly, making use of what T’Pring recognized as an ironic statement. “Very cool. You’ve probably broken it.”

The tricorder beeped at T’Pring’s feet. “Unlikely,” she determined, bending down to read the on-screen data, “as it is now exhibiting species-typical movement patterns and speed at a depth of roughly one-point-four-two-six-five meters and descending.”

Te Kiri’s face contorted past T’Pring’s capacity to recognize human facial emotional indicators. Although she shook her head and furrowed her brow, the curve of her mouth was distinctly fond – and when her expression relaxed into a smile, it still resembled in some way a snarling _sehlat._

“Roughly one-point-four-two-six-five and descending,” she echoed. “Oh, you gorgeous lady, you!”

“I do not follow,” T’Pring said. “What is the connection between that numerical figure and my physical appearance?”

Te Kiri winked at her and tapped her own temple twice with her forefinger. “Gorgeous _brain,_ Miss T’Pring. You know we have the right antivenom compounds tucked away in here somewhere,” she said, tapping their heavy box of equipment with her foot. “However, if you do that again, I will write up an official reprimand as your supervisor and you may very well be dismissed from our study,” she concluded, still smiling. A beam of sunlight from behind caught in her frizzy halo of dark curls, picking up the subtle reddish tones that were not visible under typical lighting conditions.

T’Pring wondered fleetingly how it was that her first betrothed had so decisively chosen a life among these mercurial beings. As with all thoughts of Spock, betrothal, or partnership in general, she dismissed it.

\---

Uncharacteristically, T’Pring had _blown off_ her discretionary shift with Dr. Te Kiri and Dr. Wahanui at the laboratory in order to spend her evening at the Green Orange, an establishment that laid claim to the title of longest-standing lesbian bar in Tauranga. She had become an occasional visitor and had grown familiar with one member of the staff in particular – Fizza Gralx, a wayward daughter of the Seventh House of Betazed.

Seeing the way Fizza’s starry black eyes lit up with recognition from behind the bar, T’Pring considered that her decision to pass the time here was more of a habit than she was willing to admit. Negligence of this kind was not fit for the character of a Vulcan.

Then again, what value had character among strangers? She was not _on_ Vulcan, and there were few enough Vulcans on Earth to recognize her transgressions that she might allow her once-rigid character some mutability.

She desired to retreat into the cool shadows at the back of the room to sit by herself for a few hours, but Fizza waved her over with a gesture too large to pretend not to have noticed it, so she stepped into the electric light that buzzed and glittered around the bar instead. She accepted that the hungry smile on Fizza’s face embarrassed her and promptly quelled the feeling.

“Oh, hello, Miss,” Fizza cooed. Pink light and blue shadows flickered across her luminous skin like the dancing fires of Midas II, wreathing her carbon-black hair with color. “How would you like to try the newest offering on our drinks menu?”

“What is it?” T’Pring asked. Fizza was already turned to the side, splashing things into a cocktail shaker with no clear guiding principle.

“I’m calling it the _IDIC Elixir,”_ she announced, tipping the ice out of a chilled glass.

“You have been inspired by Vulcan ideology?” T’Pring leaned in despite herself, curious to see if she would recognize any of the ingredients by sight.

“Well,” said Fizza, “inspired by you, at least. Taste, my love.”

T’Pring took the tall glass right from Fizza’s hand, careful to avoid any contact with her skin but quietly thrilled by the possibility that such contact might inadvertently occur. The liquid within was both what humans called _sparkling_ – that is, infused with an amount of carbon dioxide sufficient to form bubbles which would alter the texture of the beverage – and what the humans called _glittery_ – that is, infused with small reflective particles designed to scatter light and create an attractive, shimmering luster.

She sipped, and found the experience most pleasing.

“This contains Argosian gin,” T’Pring observed, “an infusion derived from the Earth rose _Rosa damascena_ , Vulcan _tono’pak_ and _l’miri_ fruit…” –she paused and allowed herself another taste– “…a syrup containing refined sucrose… and there is another Earthling flavor which I recognize but am unable to name. Perhaps a plant in the family _Lamiaceae._ How did the concept of IDIC lead you to select these ingredients?”

“Well,” said Fizza, “I-D-I-C means _infinite_ diversity in _infinite_ combinations, which means each and every IDIC Elixir is different from the last.”

T’Pring found this to be entirely unreasonable and told Fizza as much. “You cannot intend to take orders for a drink with ingredients selected at random.”

“Ah-ah, but I never said it was random.”

“How, then, do you intend to create infinite and unique variations on request?”

“I look at you,” said Fizza lowly, leaning in and seeming to consume T’Pring with her big, black, frightening eyes, “and I give you what you need.”

Fizza allowed T’Pring to have her moment of doubtful, dumbstruck silence. Then, she tapped her gently on the wrist – only over her dress – and flashed her teeth. “First one’s free, my love,” she said kindly, “now go sit in your booth.”

Seated more comfortably in the shadows, away from the bustle of the other patrons closer to the bar, T’Pring reflected on this exchange until the amount of liquid in her glass had been reduced by roughly 56.785% by way of consumption. She disagreed fundamentally with Fizza’s argument that a fleeting emotional condition could provide sufficient data with which to create a recipe that would be favorably received. The IDIC Elixir would undoubtedly result in a nonzero number of unsatisfied customers – quite possibly a number that would exceed that of _satisfied_ customers. The unsustainability of the concept from a business perspective did not seem to have occurred to Fizza. T’Pring therefore concluded that the reasoning methods of betazoids were every bit as strange and opaque to her as those of humans.

This conclusion having been made, she activated her PADD and opened her personal correspondence log.

 _NO UNREAD COMMUNICATIONS,_ announced the screen in standard Vulcan text. She had thought that Stonn, perhaps…

But it was illogical to expect communication from one with whom she herself had no desire to communicate. She felt the low thrum of his continued existence at the base of her skull from time to time, and that was enough. No doubt he assumed that she would contact him herself if any details of her time on Earth held relevance for him and therefore had no need to inquire after her well-being – and rightly so. If she died, after all, then he would know at once.

It was fortunate that Stonn did not require her attention at this time. Her _professional_ correspondence log notified her of several messages requiring urgent review and response, and she was grateful that personal matters would not threaten to distract her from her duties.

She adjusted the curve of her spine, regretting that the nature of the device all but demanded poor posture – at least under these lighting conditions, where she had to use her own shadow as a regulator to allow the screen to function at a consistent brightness level. Without her long hair as a screen against the neon lights that pulsed and dimmed at odd intervals, the PADD’s display would constantly adjust itself to compensate for every change in the number of lumens hitting its sensor, and the resultant disruptions to her focus would quickly become intolerable.

By the time she had consumed 71.5% of her second IDIC Elixir, her ability to judge the amount of liquid remaining in a given container by volume had been so inhibited that she was forced to round her percentages to a single decimal place. She had three official messages left unreviewed, all requests from agencies on Vulcan for reports on her current study with the Pacific Environmental Survey. In light of her dampened precision, she judged that she would not be able to respond with appropriate accuracy or discretion. She decided to engage in another activity and switched off the screen of her PADD.

At 99% consumption of her third drink, no alternate activity had presented itself.

She was surrounded by laughing, dancing, talking, vibrant women, and she felt utterly out of place among them.

Her fourth drink was a glass of water, nudged across the bar with a gentle hand. She felt resentment. She perceived that she was being infantilized. She reminded herself of Fizza’s psionic abilities and visualized a dark curtain drawn around her mind. “This is not what I ordered,” she said.

“I-D-I-C means you get what you need,” said Fizza, leaning close so as to ensure an appropriate measure of discretion, “which is not always what you think you ordered.”

“I will have whisky,” T’Pring countered.

“That sounds wonderful,” said a voice too close to her ear. “I’ll have one, too.”

T’Pring noticed tension in her hands and stretched her fingers to release it.

“Terran or Tellarite?” asked Fizza, her eyes suddenly sparkling with an unidentifiable emotion.

“Tellarite,” said T’Pring and the stranger at once.

A fascinating synchronicity.

Fizza smiled cryptically and turned to pour their drinks, leaving T’Pring to fend for herself against this new interloper.

She was apparently human. Her black hair was brushed back from her face and twisted into an elegant bouffant that contrasted pleasingly with the angularity of her features. Her brown eyes were deep and dark, but far from the absolute black of a daughter of Betazed. Her thick eyelashes cast long, feathered shadows along her cheeks, to which some cosmetic had been applied that made her brown skin shine like aventurine glass. Observing the superlatively reflective qualities of her lip gloss, T’Pring understood belatedly that the woman’s lips had been moving, presumably occupied in the rendering of speech.

“Repeat,” said T’Pring, steadying her gaze on the bridge of the woman’s nose to simulate the eye contact which many humans considered polite.

“I said, I’m sorry for interrupting, but I’ve seen you before.”

“I do not know you,” T’Pring told her, suspecting that the woman had been mistaken in approaching her.

Rather than being cowed or dissuaded, the woman just smiled. Her teeth were very white and very straight. “No, I guess you wouldn’t,” she said. “I’m Nyota Uhura. I’m the senior communications officer of the _U.S.S. Enterprise._ Or, I was, until about a week ago. Right now, I’m on leave.”

T’Pring waited. The word _Enterprise_ curled unpleasantly into her ears and alluded to Nyota’s reason for knowing her face but did not altogether confirm it. Unfortunately, Nyota continued, and, seemingly without reservation, guaranteed the truth of T’Pring’s worst suspicion.

“I should also tell you,” she said, “that I’m a friend of Mister Spock’s.”

“I do not wish to speak of him,” said T’Pring. She expected that Nyota would interpret this as dismissal and was taken aback when she only leaned closer, resting her elbow on the bar and her chin on her hand. A gold ring on one finger glinted against her hair.

“That’s all right,” she said. “What would you like to talk about instead?”

“You are a lesbian,” T’Pring said.

Nyota’s eyes widened and T’Pring understood that she had misspoken. Then, Nyota threw her head back and laughed. Although she appreciated the musical quality of Nyota’s voice, T’Pring no longer knew how to interpret the reaction.

“Aren’t _you?”_ Nyota asked, still smiling.

“Such a social designation would be meaningless among Vulcans, for whom mates are not chosen on the basis of attraction,” T’Pring explained.

“But –” Nyota said, gesturing with her braceleted arm, “– you’re _here.”_

“I am soothed by the absence of men,” said T’Pring.

“Well, I don’t know if I’d say the same for myself,” said Nyota, “but I’m willing to drink to it.” She lifted the lowball glass that T’Pring had not seen arrive. Her powers of observation must have been more impaired than she had thought.

T’Pring mirrored the gesture. They drank.

“Now,” said Nyota, with an edge of roughness in her soft voice, “what can we talk about what doesn’t involve men?”

“How did you recognize me?” T’Pring asked.

“I’ve seen your picture,” said Nyota.

“Three Earth years have passed since the _koon-ut kal-i-fee,”_ said T’Pring, “and we have never interacted with each other. Humans are not in possession of an eidetic memory. My picture must have made an unusually strong impression.”

Nyota grinned. Her nose wrinkled in a way that reminded T’Pring momentarily of Dr. Te Kiri, but she did not want to think of Te Kiri at the moment and so she did not. “Well,” said Nyota, “I can explain that for you, if you’d like.”

“Yes,” said T’Pring. “Explain.”

“I _never_ forget a beautiful woman,” said Nyota.

T’Pring quickly averted her gaze so that her face could not be searched for reaction. She blinked – too late – against the pink and yellow spots that blossomed across her field of vision when she came face to face with the neon lights behind the bar.

\---

“T’Pring?”

“Hello, Earth to Vulcan?”

“T’Pring!” Te Kiri snapped.

T’Pring lifted her head to see Drs. Te Kiri and Wahanui looming over her with the bright light behind them shining through their hair like sun breaking through storm clouds. Though she was physically present in the Pacific Environmental Survey Lab, her mind, as the humans said, had been _wandering._

“Repeat,” requested T’Pring. She steepled her hands on the desk in front of her and fixed her eyes on a point in between her colleagues’ heads.

Te Kiri tapped the PADD in her hand sharply against T’Pring’s desk. Either the sound of hard plastic on metal or the look in Te Kiri’s eyes made her flinch.

“What Doctor Te Kiri means to say,” interjected Wahanui, “is that we’d like your opinion on this when you get the time.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” said T’Pring. “I will examine the data now.”

Wahanui circled around behind her to indicate points of data from over T’Pring’s shoulder. T’Pring noticed from the smell of her breath that she had _indulged_ (as Wahanui herself would describe it) in a sweetened beverage instead of her usual _black coffee._ A lock of Wahanui’s silvering hair fell forward and brushed across T’Pring’s shoulder. She seemed to notice and tucked it back into place, but did not otherwise rectify her transgression of T’Pring’s _personal space._ It often seemed to T'Pring that Earth people had given a name to _personal space_ in theory only the better to disregard it in practice.

“Here,” Wahanui said, flipping through to show T’Pring several images in quick succession, “we’ve got maps showing the normal movement patterns of some of the species we’ve tagged. This is from data we’ve collected over the past three years.”

T’Pring ingested the broad strokes of the information. “Continue,” she said.

Wahanui tapped to the next screen, a selection of maps showing movement patterns of the same species, but drastically changed. “Now, here we have the data from this year. I don’t need to tell you what’s changed.”

“Fascinating,” said T’Pring. Instead of movements made according to the individual habits of their species, all of the data seemed to suggest that many animals were converging towards the same geographic location. She adjusted the display to overlay the data from several maps at once and confirmed that the destinations of many of the creatures were indeed identical. “These aberrations appear to be occurring across all monitored species.”

“Whatever’s causing this, it doesn’t seem to discriminate,” confirmed Te Kiri. “The same behavior is even occurring in aquatic mammals along with the birds and fish – not to mention that extraterrestrial invasive species have been affected, as well.”

“So, that’s what they _don’t_ have in common,” said Wahanui. “What we’ve got to do now is figure out what they _do.”_

“Find out whether this whatever-it-is is choosing its victims randomly or based on some factor they have in common,” Te Kiri added.

T’Pring noted her choice of words. “Victims?”

“Yeah,” Wahanui confirmed. “You may have noticed these trips have only been happening in one direction. Within a day or two of reaching this location,” Wahanui indicated the screen, “our readings show us the vital signs of each animal rapidly declining to nil.”

“Not only that,” said Te Kiri, “but the signal disappears entirely.”

T’Pring narrowed her eyes in concentration, navigating through the pages of data on the PADD. “The tracking function should remain operational until the device itself is compromised.”

“Meaning,” said Wahanui, “that whatever’s drawing animals to this location is also destroying our equipment.”

“The two phenomena may or may not be related,” T’Pring said, “and they may or may not have been intentionally induced.”

Wahanui looked at her with a thin smile that was more apparent in the crinkle of her eyes than the curve of her lips. “Can always count on you to keep us from getting ahead of ourselves, can’t we? Right now, the priority’s to identify any common factor between the animals that are being drawn to the location in question. Hopefully, identifying that factor will lead us right to the cause.”

This confused T’Pring. “Should we not investigate this phenomenon at the source?”

“See?” demanded Te Kiri. “That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

“You’re both right,” Wahanui admitted, “but our survey doesn’t have the resources to mount that kind of expedition. The signals are disappearing at a depth that we just don’t have the capability to explore.”

“Earth people have developed space flight and warp capability,” T’Pring said, “and they are not able to explore the depths of their oceans? Why not?”

“We have the capability, I’m sure,” replied Wahanui, “but the equipment doesn’t exist. Now, if we have a very good reason, maybe we can commission it. But if we can get close to our answer in the meantime, that’s what I’d like to do.”

“Understood,” said T’Pring. Since her arrival on Earth at the start of the year, she had become all too familiar with the artificial barriers that Earth people placed between themselves and scientific discovery. The Pacific Environmental Survey, the small team of which she was now a part, had one specific task: to capture, tag, record, and monitor a sample of Earth-native and extraterrestrial-invasive species living in the Earth's Pacific Ocean. Resources and permission to carry out other tasks had to be requested and were often outright denied. Such was the bureaucracy of Earth.

“All right,” said Wahanui, with nothing less than a sigh. “Let’s take the afternoon to review the data on our own. Use the main computers so you have the whole database at your disposal – some of these disappearing microchips are from previous surveys, even from decades ago.”

Without much more ado, the three of them settled down at their respective computer stations and got down to work.

Although she recognized the urgency of the situation, T’Pring took exactly one small personal recess outside of their scheduled lunch and afternoon breaks. Roughly two hours into the day, T’Pring, unsatisfied with her level of focus, allowed herself to spend an amount of time in reflection. For the ensuing eleven Earth minutes and four Earth seconds, T’Pring meditated on the inexplicable spark that she had felt spread through her from her fingertips to her toes when, as they said goodbye the previous evening, Nyota had briefly touched her hand.

Following that, she allowed her mind to be consumed by her work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I've been working on this idea for a while, and I'm excited to start to share it with everyone! You can find me on tumblr as perphesone, and if you like this kind of thing you can listen to my writing playlist for this fic here on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1u7IhWzOsNebbmdcf55XTc?si=KeINRqNFREKcIZIg4g-_7Q
> 
> Please excuse any mistakes I make with my New Zealander characters and settings - I'm doing my best, but I'm no expert on the accent and I've never been there! I'm, let's say, very open to a beta reader to check these things for me - if you think you would be a good fit, message me on tumblr or comment with a way to reach you!
> 
> This fic is planned to be fairly long, about novella-length, though I'm not bold enough to make a wordcount estimate. 
> 
> If you read this far, thank you!!! Please consider leaving a comment if you want to let me know what you enjoyed, or what you think is behind this strange ecological phenomenon that T'Pring's team has uncovered!


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